Off-road vehicles typically utilised in, for example, agricultural, construction, mining and forestry applications, such as tractors, harvesters, diggers, graders, dump trucks and other powered vehicles, commonly comprise electronic equipment designed to assist an operator in guiding the vehicle along a particular path.
In particular, agricultural vehicles, such as tractors, harvesters and the like, often include a guidance device that includes a Global Positioning System (GPS) unit and display to guide the vehicle along a predetermined path using positional data provided by the GPS constellation of satellites as an aide.
Moreover, it is known to use guidance devices that include GPS units on agricultural vehicles such that a course may be stored within the guidance device and the guidance device operates the vehicle in a semi-autonomous manner.
Alternatively, the guidance device provides direction to an operator of the agricultural vehicle to enable the operator to maintain a predetermined fixed path when, for example, harvesting crops with the vehicle.
However, like all high technology equipment, it is not uncommon for guidance devices that are utilised in agricultural vehicles to fail and, from the point of view of the user at least, without any apparent reason. As such, it is necessary to have a skilled technician travel to the site in order to diagnose and correct the fault in the guidance device.
Often these faults are transient and stem from situations such as communication errors between a base station guidance sub-module of the guidance device and an on-board guidance sub-module due to the terrain and obstructions between the sub-modules.
Given the often remote locations in which agricultural vehicles operate, a failure of the guidance device may result in a long period of down time whilst the technician travels to a site in order to diagnose and correct the fault.
Often, a fault with a guidance device on an agricultural vehicle is relatively simple for a skilled technician to correct and requires a relatively small amount of time on site compared with the relatively large amount of time required for the diagnostician/technician to travel to the site.
It is known in the art to remotely diagnose the performance of a vehicle. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,611,740 describes a system for monitoring a vehicle that includes a wireless appliance in electrical contact with an in-vehicle computer. The system described allows a remote diagnostician to interface with a computer on the vehicle to obtain data relating to the performance of the vehicle.
Furthermore, JP10-5427 describes a diagnostic tool for automobiles that notifies a nearby service station of a malfunction condition in relation to the performance of the vehicle.
Whilst the systems described above adequately provide for remote diagnostics of vehicles, remotely diagnosing a vehicle guidance device has a different set of problems that are not catered for by these prior art systems.
Hence, it is desirable to provide a system and method of remotely diagnosing a vehicular guidance module.
In this specification, the terms “comprises”, “comprising”, “includes”, “including” or similar terms are intended to mean a non-exclusive inclusion, such that a method, system or apparatus that comprises a list of elements does not include those elements solely, but may well include other elements not listed.